“You smoke an awful lot, don’t you?” he said.
“Only on Sundays. The food here don’t agree with me, so on Sundays I give my stomach a rest. I go without dinner and fill my system with smoke and philosophy—otherwise I couldn’t face Monday.”
“I like Monday,” said Shaw. “I like school better than home.”
“Does your old man knock you about?”
“My grandpa?”
“No, your father.”
“He’s dead.”
“Where’s your mother?”
“Gone away.” Shaw spoke gruffly. He did not want to talk of his mother to this man.
Searle looked shrewdly into his face. “Never mind. You’ll soon be on your own. Look at the brow you’ve got. Lots of room for brains there. You work hard at your books and you’ll be a professor some day.”
Shaw began to tear up the tender grass with nervous fingers. “I don’t know what I want to be,” he said. “But my mother says I’m to have all the schooling I want. She’ll pay for it—if I work hard. What would you be if you was me?”
“What was your dad?”
“A doctor, but I don’t want to be one. I want to work outdoors, but not farming. I don’t know what.”
“Take your time! You’re young! Look at me! I’m thirty and haven’t settled down yet. But then I hate work. I shall be away from this place soon—it gives me a pain to live among folk that think of nothing but farming. There’s other things in the world, believe me! Ships and queer cargoes in them and foreign countries! You ought to do things with that brow of yours and that name and a mother to pay for your schooling. By gum, I wish I’d had your chance!” But there was no regret in his face as the smoke drifted down his chiseled nostrils and his white teeth showed in a smile.
Shaw lay on his stomach watching him, drinking in all he said of foreign countries. He had never met anyone like him before, a man who was free, who was reckless, who stayed nowhere that he did not like. It was this last attribute that moved Shaw most deeply. It had always been his conception of life that you grew up, worked, married and died in your own place, near where you were born. He had liked to hear of other lands in his geography lessons. The thought of a life different from the life led by those about him had stirred him like a troubling dream. His great-grandfather’s books had opened the door of his imagination and beyond he saw rich-colored vistas, as he plodded home across the fields.
He was ravenous. By the way he felt he was sure it must be nearly tea time, and yet the sun was still high. As he neared the house he began to run. In the shelter of the shed he saw his great-uncle Merton’s glossy black democrat wagon. In the stable the two fast horses would be munching hay.
His uncles were gathered in a group about dapper Leslie Gower, their cousin. He was an only child, always dressed in an attempt at fashion, and with a taste for good horseflesh. His parents drove out with him in trepidation, for nothing less than reckless speed at a reckless clip satisfied him. He called out good-naturedly:—
“Hullo, Shaw! Getting hungry? Go on in! There’s a bag of candy waiting for you!”
Shaw’s uncles guffawed. Shaw was not taken in. He knew quite well that to bring him a bag of candy was the last thing that would enter Uncle Merton’s and Aunt Becky’s heads. With a sheepish smile he went round to the other side of the house and looked in at the kitchen window to see the time. It was half-past three.
There was still an hour and a half before tea! He remembered the dairy and the pans of cream that stood there, and the cheese. The dairy was Jane Gower’s particular concern. She alone skimmed the thick cream,—no drop of it ever appeared on the table,—she alone patted the sweet-smelling butter into shape and imprinted on each roll the design which distinguished her butter at the market—an acorn and two oak leaves. It was she who made the slightly rubberish but pungent cheese. All the profits from the dairy were in her keeping and she guarded it as an eagle its nest.
Shaw had sometimes ventured there, close by his mother’s side, and stolen crumbs of cheese from the wooden platter. Now he peered through the window, then slid through the door and closed it after him. Inside there was a delightful coolness, and a pleasant, faintly sour smell.
The cheeses had been sold at the market yesterday, all but one which would be cut for tea. He dared not put a knife into that. A large crock of thick yellow cream was full to the brim, bubbling at its edge in a rich foam. A wooden spoon lay on the shelf. Shaw dipped it into the cream and began an orgy of something between eating and drinking.
He was in for it! If he were caught, it horrified him to think what would happen. So with his mind a deliberate blank he guzzled the ambrosia till his stomach would tolerate no more. Then he licked the spoon clean, and with his palm wiped up the stray drops. He glided out undiscovered.
He felt a little squeamish, but the gnawing at his vitals had ceased. He slunk into the house, drawn by the fascination of visitors.
The two old brothers and their wives were sitting in the uncomfortable, seldom used parlor, which smelled a little musty and had a red velvet suite in it. On a centre table with fringed cover lay the Family Bible and a great sea shell from Florida. The likeness between Roger and Merton Gower was remarkable at the first glance, but on closer scrutiny it was noticeable how the contrast of their characters was manifest in their persons. In height, feature, coloring, beard, they were alike as twins, though Roger was some years the elder. Each head showed the same smooth dome of baldness. But Merton’s beard was less coarse, his skin was fairer, and his full blue eyes had the sweetness and innocence of a child’s.
There was real affection between the brothers, but Roger was contemptuous of Merton for his submissiveness under Becky’s domination; also because he had only got one child, and he a little whippersnapper.
There was no affection between the sisters-in-law, neither was there open antagonism. Neither had any obligation to the other; their meetings were infrequent. Jane would, in any case, have had no weapons against Becky’s vixen tongue, which had made the last years of Shaw Gower’s life miserable.
His farm and what money he had somehow had gone to Merton and Becky. They lived a life of ease and affluence contrasted with the other pair. Becky had had only one child to care for and, during all her married life, had kept the same browbeaten maid of all work.
Now she sat, sprightly and pleased with the contrast between her and Jane, her black silk dress shining with bead trimming, her little black eyes and small black head alert. She was the first to notice Shaw. She surveyed him disparagingly.
“Well,” she exclaimed in her nasal voice, “so here is Cristabel’s boy! Can’t you come and say how-de-do to your aunt and uncle? My goodness, Jane, the child looks dull! Do you think he’s bright in his mind?”
“He’s bright enough,” answered Jane, bridling for her daughter’s son, “but he thinks he can do as he pleases now his mother’s not here. He’ll find out he’s mistaken.”
Becky’s beady black eyes twinkled with pleasure at discovering that already Jane was having trouble with the boy. “What’s he been up to, Jane? Whatever it is, I know you’ll take it out of him.”
Shaw, discomfited, began to back out of the room.
“Don’t go!” ordered his grandmother. “You just tell your aunt and uncle what you did.”
His head drooped and he stuck out his lips.
“Hold up your head, Shaw, and tell or you’ll be sorry.”
Somehow